Old code is always interesting.

I had to recompile some old FORTRAN code for an install at work, and on one of our UNIX platforms, it generated an error message. It seemed odd, as the code compiled on the other UNIX platforms just fine, but I took a look at the code just in case.

The code had a huge amount of comment code at the beginning, and the name of the programmer. It was from Herb.

Now, this is a programmer I never knew. He was gone long before I started to work here, and in fact, never even worked at our current site; he was an employee when the company was in Berkeley. I had heard stories about him, though; he was the exceedingly weirdest of the weird. He was a roughly egg-shaped person, and apparently always wore white button-up shirts with very short ties. He smoked a pipe (obviously, this was long before the laws banning smoking in offices). When he was ready to grace you with his opinion, he would lean way back in his chair and lay his arms across his chest, fingertips just touching, and flutter them together.

I never knew his last name. This code tells me: it's Doughty. Small world!